Wednesday, June 18, 2008
The other day, after reading a little bit about bill C-61, the US-style copyright bill that basically strips any right you may think you have concerning any form of media you can imagine, I dropped the Liberal industry critic, Sukh Dhaliwal, a line. Oh, and I CC'd Stephane Dion, Jack Layton, and Gilles Duceppe, because I basically told the honourable member Mr. Dhaliwal that the Liberal party needs to grow a pair and actually do their job for a change. Since the last election, and even before that, actually, the Liberals have been voting along with the Conservatives on pretty much anything of consequence out of fear of triggering an election. Basically, Mr. Harper has made them his bitch. I'm not sure if Mr. Dion was aware of this, but some of us have noticed. I suppose he could count on the general public being a bunch of absent-minded morons who don't keep track of these things, but that would be a rather offensive position to take. So, I suppose the alternative is that the Liberals are off in their own little world. I'm not sure if that's any better.
Doesn't this guy look trustworthy? I think so.
Anyways, Jack Layton, or at least an agent who reads his email, replied today. Unsurprisingly, the NDP will be voting against bill C-61, which has some elements that are impractical to enforce (such as the provision that would make it illegal for you to back up one of your DVDs to some other format to watch on your iPod), and some that are frighteningly easy to enforce (such as the provision that would allow your iPod to be confiscated at the airport if some agent suspected that it might contain illegally obtained media). How pissed would I be if some jackass took my laptop on my way to a conference based on a hunch? So, yeah, don't worry about triggering an election, because there are many people out there who would not hold it against you.
1 comments:
The problem with your statement is that the public are a bunch of absent minded morons. Most people don't consume traditional (and for the most part responsible) media these days and instead get their news from blogs that can be slightly misinformed and biased.
The confiscation thing was, to my knowledge, part of separate and as yet untabled legislation.
Also, had the Liberals triggered an election in the last year they would have been in no position to fight an election and would have been rolled by the Conservative machine making us far worse off. Ideally, Parliament will recess shortly, the Liberals will market their tax proposal hard over the summer, Parliament will fall and their will be an election in the fall and all this legislation will die. Die die die.
The NDP doesn't want an election either, they are able to pretend to be outraged for "working families" (they hate the dysfunctional) only because they know the Liberals will play the enabler.
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